What Buying a Property in Morocco Really Costs: Every Fee Listed

Registration duty, droits d'enregistrement, is the largest of the fixed costs on a Moroccan purchase. As of 2026, it is charged at 4% of the declared price on a built property intended for housing, commercial, professional or administrative use, according to the official fiscal guide published for Moroccans living abroad. Buy bare land earmarked for construction instead of a finished building, and the rate rises to 5%. There is one reduction: the first sale of a qualifying social housing unit, between 50 and 80 square metres and priced at 250,000 dirhams or less before VAT, is taxed at 3% instead.

In practice, the buyer settles this cost, since it is what allows the new title to be registered in your name. The same guide sets a strict deadline: the deed has to be registered and the duty paid within 30 days of signing. Miss that window and penalties and surcharges apply on top of the rate itself.

Separate from registration duty is the fee the ANCFCC, Morocco's land registry, charges to record the change of ownership on the titre foncier. Under the decree that sets its tariff, a standard sale is charged an ad valorem rate of 1.5% of the price, plus a fixed 100 dirhams per property, with a minimum total charge of 500 dirhams. On anything above a very low-value property, the 1.5% is what drives the number.

Registration duty and this land registry fee are the two costs that are fixed by law and the same for every buyer. Add them together and, on a standard built property, you are looking at roughly 5.5% of the price before a notary is even involved.

A Moroccan notary is not optional. Every sale goes through one, and their fee is added on top of the two costs above. It sits under a government-set cap that comes down as a percentage the higher the price of the property, so the fee on a modest apartment is proportionally larger than on an expensive villa. Because the cap leaves room underneath it, ask your notary for a written quote before you commit rather than assuming a fixed rate; there is genuine room to negotiate, particularly on larger purchases.

There is one part of this that is entirely avoidable. An additional registration duty of 2% applies to any sale over 300,000 dirhams where the payment cannot be traced, in practice meaning cash rather than a cheque, bank transfer or another traceable method, under the same fiscal guide. That sits on top of the standard rate, so an untraceable payment effectively pushes registration duty from 4% to 6% on a built property, or from 5% to 7% on land. It is the same principle that runs through every part of a Moroccan purchase for a buyer living abroad: wire the money through a bank, in your own name, and keep the paperwork. Doing that properly is also what protects your ability to bring the proceeds back out again if you ever sell.

Agency commission is not fixed by law, and how it is split between buyer and seller varies from one agency to the next. At Simpled Estate we work on a flat structure: the seller pays a flat 2.5% commission on completion and knows the figure upfront, and buyers pay nothing to browse, view or reserve a property through us, because we are paid by the promoters and sellers whose properties we bring you. If another agency ever quotes you a percentage as the buyer, ask exactly what it covers and get it in writing, since it is not a cost set by any government schedule the way registration duty is.

Take a built apartment priced at 1,200,000 dirhams, paid for entirely by bank transfer. Registration duty at 4% comes to 48,000 dirhams. The ANCFCC's land registry fee, at 1.5% plus the fixed 100 dirhams, comes to roughly 18,100 dirhams. Together, before the notary's own fee, that is close to 66,100 dirhams, or about 5.5% of the price. A social housing unit within the 250,000-dirham, 50-to-80-square-metre band is treated very differently: registration duty drops to 3% and the price itself is capped, so the fixed costs are a fraction of the amount above.

Before you settle on a figure, get a written estimate that includes the notary's own fee, since that is the one variable sitting inside an otherwise fixed set of numbers. If you want a feel for what is genuinely on the market before you run these numbers against a real property, look at what is being offered in the WhatsApp community for the city you're targeting.